Tuesday, 30 July 2013

The Vault Of Kubrick

Last Friday I went with a couple of friends to visit the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the London College of Communication; courtesy of our host and Senior Archivist, Richard Daniels. Richard is an absolute mine of information regarding Kubrick and his work and after showing us into the main room, (designed to reference the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey), he took us into the atmosphere controlled archive itself. State-of-the-art remote controlled doors slide back, each in turn to reveal corridors housing relics from every aspect of Kubrick's career.

One page from reams of hand-typed documents from Jack Torrance's 'book' in various languages.

Danny's clothing from The Shining, nicely boxed and stored at a constant temperature, sans snow.

The archive storage doors, looking a bit too much like HAL for my liking!

The main archives room looking distinctly familiar in design.

Below: Kubrick's own well-thumbed copy of Vietnam Inc used as reference for Full Metal Jacket.

The severed head from the final moments of Full Metal Jacket. (click for large)

Kubrick's camera. I would KILL to own this Nikon! (okay, slight exaggeration).

The Man himself with his Leica III. A self-portrait from the late 1940's.

Detail of a 2001 promotional comic for Howard Johnsons.

Below: The future of the mobile phone.

Into the Eyes Wide Shut section... and Alice's drug paraphernalia.

Below: Bill Harford's Driver License.

After three hours, the vault was once again sealed shut and a creatively stimulating time was had by all. Thanks again, Richard! To see images from the Kubrick exhibition when it was in Amsterdam, click here for my previous post.

It's okay. I asked Richard the archivist and he looked into it for you. He said - "The answer is no, it isn't here and I have no idea what happened to it. At the end of the filming there was the usual sale of costumes, sets etc. So it was probably bought by a member of cast or crew."

Keep your fingers crossed that the member of cast or crew gets to read this and respond at some point. You never know!